author
George William Russell
1867–1935
A major voice of the Irish Literary Revival, he wrote under the name Æ and brought poetry, mysticism, art, and public life together in a way that still feels distinctive. His work moves between the visionary and the everyday, with a calm, searching spirit at its center.
7 Audiobooks
The Nuts of Knowledge: Lyrical Poems Old and New
by George William Russell
By Still Waters: Lyrical Poems Old and New
by George William Russell
Imaginations and Reveries
by George William Russell
The Hero in Man
by George William Russell
The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity
by George William Russell
AE in the Irish Theosophist
by George William Russell
The Divine Vision, and Other Poems
by George William Russell
About the author
Born in Lurgan, County Armagh, on April 10, 1867, George William Russell became widely known by the pen name Æ. He was an Irish poet, writer, editor, critic, painter, and public figure, and is remembered as one of the leading personalities of the Irish literary renaissance.
Russell spent much of his life in Dublin and moved easily across different worlds: literature, visual art, journalism, and social thought. Along with his poetry and essays, he was known for mystical and visionary interests that shaped both his writing and his painting. He also played an important role in Irish public life through journalism and cooperative agricultural work, giving his career a practical side as well as an imaginative one.
He died in Bournemouth, England, on July 17, 1935. Today, Æ is remembered not only for his poems and prose, but for the unusual breadth of his life: he was a literary artist, a painter of symbolic and dreamlike scenes, and a cultural figure whose influence reached well beyond the page.